In many public facilities, such as toilets in air ports, railway stations, hotels, department stores, etc., dispensers for paper towels are installed. Large such facilities can have between 500-1000 visitors during an eight hours period of time. In order to reduce the times the dispensers for paper towels have to be refilled during such a period, there is a tendency to construct dispensers to hold ever more towels. However, there is not much gained by larger dispensers if not the waste bins for paper towels can store the increased amount of used paper towels. There is therefore a need for a waste bin that can store a lot more used paper towels than conventional waste bins and still have a moderate size.
It is known in prior art to use compacting devices in waste bins or garbage containers in order to decrease the volume of used paper towels or other waste thrown into the bin so that the bins or containers can contain a lot more used paper towels or other waste. Many of the known compacting devices consist of protruding parts on lids which compact the waste in the bin when the lid is closed, see for example EP-B1-0 006 242, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,440.978. U.S. Pat. No. 5,884,556 disclose a compacting devices mounted in a separate housing that can be introduced into a trash container in order to compact the content therein.
Patent abstracts of Japan No. 10-007204 discloses a trash box having a cover which automatically opens when trash falls thereon and a pushing plate which turn from a standing position to a downward position. The cover, pushing plate and their mechanisms are disposed in separate unit detachable from the rest of the trash box. A drawback with this known trash box is that the cover, pushing plate and their mechanisms take up a lot of the available space in the box. It is also relatively cumbersome to empty the box from trash.
The objective of the present invention is fill the above mentioned need by providing a waste bin with compacting means in which the compacting means does not significantly reduce available space inside the bin and which enables the emptying of the bin to be performed fast and easily.